September 23, 2010

Delhi was earlier called Dilli, the city with a heart. British brought the capital of their Indian colony to Dilli and made it Delhi. In today’s digital world, it aptly represents del in ctrl,alt,del.

Though the guy in the street in Delhi is without a heart, he has one virtue: he is not ruffled with all that is happening around him. He suffers but does not raise his voice. He willfully pays bribe to get things done. He is a perfect pacifist that the God would like him to be. Road rage is another thing, but there it is not the aam admi - common man - but a rags-to-riches yuppie whose father has got enormous money by selling land or a progeny of a politician or a policeman. So, no issues there.

But suddenly the blood of each Delhiite has started boiling on drop of a hat, a footbridge or a tile on the false ceiling. The paranoia is so much that if he hears the words ‘Commonwealth Games’ in dreams, he takes a high jump in the bed, sprints to the loo, floods the pot and wrestles back to the bed. Earlier, these very words gave him a kick as if he had taken dope. Times have changed.

Starting with bed tea to going to the bed at night, a Delhiite will have argued a thousand times about what could have been done and why things went wrong at the Games. Even a housewife aam admi talks more of the Games than TV serials or her neighbour’d daughter’s latest affair.

Though tea shops, offices, homes, restaurants, parks, bars – every public and private place is good for starting a discussion on Games, chartered buses steal the show. You crack a poor joke about the Games while entering the bus and that is good enough a trigger for discussion in every bench. Even the cleaner would take a break from beating the bus side and throw a choice expletive on Sheila, Kalmadi, Gill, even Manmohan. Good that Sonia and Rahul have kept away from the Games and are busy worrying about aam admi outside Delhi.

More than spot fixing in cricket, the bets are rising here: yesterday, there was talk of 30,000 crore rupees having been ‘eaten away’ by Kalmadi and his team of demons. By October 3, two days after Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, the figure will reach India’s annual budget. Last month, he wanted Kalmadi to resign and Gill to keep his mouth shut, today he has started demanding that they be hanged. Last week, he was wishing ‘rain, rain, go away, little Johney wants to play’, but by now he is wishing that the games are either not held at all or at least postponed.

Blah… blah… blah… I can go on, but let me conclude with this couplet by Shahryar:

Seene mein jalan, Aankhon mein toofan sa kyon hai?Is shehar mein har shakhsPareshaan sa kyon hai?[why is there burning in chest, and sort of storm in the eyes ?Why is everybody in this city sort of agitated?]